EATA was founded on July 16th 1976 as the European TA Association with the aim to bring together the numerous training activities in TA in Europe in a federated structure to ensure quality and standards and help create powerful national TA organisations, which can spread and develop Transactional Analysis in Europe.

From the beginning EATA was an organisation of membership organisations and worked in close co-operation – and with the same standards and requirements – as ITAA (the International Transactional Analysis Association in Oakland/USA).

For the first years the co-operation with ITAA was very close and training and exams were defined and organised with ITAA contracts and exams.